John Gardner: Jason and Medeia

judgment,

struggling to unsnarl tortuous tangles of law with

further

law.” He chortled, seeing it all in his mind, and beamed, clapping his plump dry hands and laughing in wheezes.

It was

delicious to him that he, great Kreon, could be seen by

men

as a fat old quop, poor drudge, queer childish lunatic. The river shone like a brass mirror. The sky was bright “Go,” said Kreon, and patted his slave’s humped back.

“Be persuasive!

Tomorrow night!”

He turned, still laughing, lifting his foot

to move inside, when out of the corner of his eye the

king

saw — sudden, terrible — a silent shadow, some creature

in the grass,

glide down the lawn and vanish. He clutched at his

chest in alarm

and reached for Ipnolebes. The stones were bare.

“Dear gods,

dear precious holy gods!” he whispered. He frowned,

blinked,

touched his chin with his fingertips. The evening was

clear,

as green as a jewel, in the darkening sky above, no life. “I must sacrifice,” he whispered, “—pray and sacrifice.” He rubbed his hands. “All honor to the blessed gods,”

he said.

His red-webbed eyes rolled up. The sky was hollow,

empty,

deep as the whole world’s grave.

King Kreon frowned, went in,

and stood for a long time lost in thought, blinking,

watching

the frail shadows of trembling leaves. His fingertips

shook.

In Corinth, on a winding hillside street, stood an old

house,

its stone blackened by many rains, great hallways dark with restive shadows of vines, alive though withered,

waiting—

listening for wind, a sound from the bottom of the sea—

climbing

crumbling walls, dropping their ancient, silent weight from huge amphoras suspended by chains from the

ceiling beams.

“The house of the witch,” it was called by children of

the neighborhood.

They came no nearer than the outer protective wall of

darkening

brick. They played there, peeking in from the midnight

shade

of olive trees that by half a century out-aged the oldest crone in Corinth. They spied with rounded

eyes

through the leaves, whispering, watching the windows

for strange lights,

alarming themselves to sharp squeals by the flicker of

a bat,

the moan of an owl, the dusty stare of a humpbacked

toad

on the ground near where the vines began.

He saw it, from his room

above, standing as he’d stood all day — or so I guessed by the way he was leaning on the window frame, the

deep-toned back

of his hand touching his jaw. What he thought, if

anything,

was locked in his mirroring eyes. Great Jason, Aison’s

son,

who’d gone to the rim of the world and back on nerve

and luck,

quick wits, a golden tongue — who’d once been crowned

a king,

his mind as ready to rule great towns as once it had been to rule the Argonauts: shrewd hero in a panther-skin, a sleek cape midnight-black. The man who brought

help.” No wonder

some men have had the suspicion he brought it from

the Underworld,

the winecup-crowded grave. His gray eyes stared out now as once they’d stared at the gleaming mirror of the gods,

the frameless

sea. He waited, still as a boulder in the silent house, no riffle of wind in the sky above. He tapped the wall with his fingertips; then stillness again.

Behind the house, in a garden hidden from strangers’

eyes

by hemlocks wedged in thick as the boulders in a wall,

a place

once formal, spare, now overrun — the vines of roses twisting, reaching like lepers’ hands or the dying limbs of oaks — white lilies, lilacs tilting up faceless graves like a dry cough from earth — his wife Medeia sat, her two young sons on the flagstones near her feet.

The span

the garden granted was filled like a bowl with sunlight. Seated by the corner gate, an old man watched, the household slave whose work

was care

of the children. Birds flashed near, quick flame: red

coral, amber,

cobalt, emerald green — bright arrows pursuing the

restless

gnat, overweening fly. But no bird’s wing, no blossom shone like Medeia’s hair. It fell to the glowing green of the grass like a coppery waterfall, as light as air, as charged with delicate hues as swirling fire. Her face was soft, half sleeping, the jawline clean as an Indian’s. Her hands were small and white. The children talked.

She smiled.

Jason — gazing from his room as a restless lion stares from his rocky cave to the sand where his big-pawed

cubs, at play,

snarl at the bones of a goat, and his calm-eyed mate

observes,

still as the desert grass — lifted his eyes from the scene, his chest still vaguely hungry, and searched the wide,

dull sky.

It stared back, quiet as a beggar’s eyes. “How casually you sit this stillness out, time slowed to stone, Medeia! It’s a fine thing to be born a princess, raised up idle, basking in the sunlight, warmed by the smile of

commoners,

or warm without it! A statue, golden ornament indifferent to the climb and fall of the sun and moon,

the endless,

murderous draw of tides. And still the days drag on.” So he spoke, removed by cruel misfortunes from all

who once

listened in a spell to his oratory, or observed with

slightly narrowed eyes

the twists and turns of his ingenious wit. No great wit now, I thought. But I hadn’t yet seen how

well

he still worked words when attending some purpose

more worthy of his skill

than private, dreary complaint. I was struck by a curious

thing:

The hero famous for his golden tongue had difficulty

speaking—

some slight stiffness of throat, his tongue unsure. If once his words came flowing like water down a weir, it was

true no longer:

as Jason was imprisoned by fate in Corinth — useless,

searching—

so Jason’s words seemed prisoned in his chest,

hammering to be free.

A moment after he spoke, Medeia’s voice came up to the window, soft as a fern; and then the children’s

voices,

softer than hers, blending in the strains of an ancient

canon

telling of blood-stained ikons, isles grown still. He

listened.

The voices rising from the garden were light as spirit

voices

freed from the crawl of change like summer in a

painted tree.

When the three finished, they clapped as though the

lyric were

some sweet thing safe as the garden, warm as leaves.

Medeia

rose, took the children’s hands, and saying a word too

faint

to hear in the room above, moved down an alleyway pressed close on either side by blue-green boughs. Jason turned his back on the window. He suddenly laughed.

His face

went grim. “You should see your Jason now, brave

Argonauts!

Living like a king, and without the drag of a king’s

dull work.

Grapes, pomegranates piled up in every bowl like the

gods’

own harvest! Ah, most happy Jason!” His eyes grew

fierce.

In the street below, the three small boys who watched, in

hiding,

hunched like cunning astrologers spying on the stars,

exchanged

sharp glances, hearing that laugh, and a visitor standing

at the gate,

Aigeus, father of Theseus — so I would later find out, a man in Medeia’s cure — looked down at the

cobblestones,

changed his mind, departed. In the garden, Medeia

looked back

at the house, or through it. It seemed her mind was far